Sunday, September 15, 2013

Yesterday, I awoke with a new idea for my virtual
city. Since I’d sculpted a miniature group of buildings in the Plateau of Man
Park the day before, I wanted to carry on the theme of more miniature
groupings. This comes naturally to me. I grew up building miniature cities in the
yard, and when later in life, I had no yard, I would draw cities on long rolls
of paper, or sculpt ceramic buildings for aquariums. So why not do the same in
Second Life?

MEDUSA LOCKS NEIGHBORHOOD

It didn’t take me long to decide where to put this next mini
city. The Medusa Locks neighborhood in the cliffs provides all sorts of ancient
nooks and crannies for the unexpected. The area is riddled with convoluted
paths, boring into the walls of the hillside as if planned by an earthworm. These
short tunnels and little rooms effect a porous shell around the inner Library
of Darkrodin, which is the large space at the core inside the hill. The area
around an outdoor ramp linking two levels of the Locks seemed an ideal site. With
a virtual trowel at hand (Prim Generator), and a large bristled paintbrush
(Photoshop), I set to work.

FROGGY

The frog was taken from one of my past exhibits called
Second Libations. She was a puppeteer in that show, and remains so in the
Locks. Her fellow puppeteers were photographed so I did not have to use large
numbers of prims in the construction of this sculpture. The strings from the
handheld handle do not attach to people or animals however. The characters in
this story are the buildings. The puppeteer manipulates the city
itself, its structures, its roads, its vegetation.

CERAMIC CITY

As mentioned above, I used to build ceramic cities for
gardens. I used a photo of one city I built in RL, and adjusted it in
Photoshop. It is the city image you see on the background wall of the
installation. To bring more depth to the flat texture, I used Prim
Generator to make some buildings come out at us in 3D.

VISIT

THE MEDUSA LOCKS NEIGHBORHOOD
In the center of the above photo, you will see a couple glowing areas in the seawall.
The one most central is the Frog Puppeteer. You cannot miss her, she is to the left
of a ship which juts out from this seawall.

If you’d like to visit the location, it is in the city of
Accentaury (the ACC Alpha sim). This is visible from the ocean while looking
toward the Medusa Locks neighborhood. It is easy to find… a complex seawall of
buildings topped with a domed structure as seen in the photo. The Frog
Puppeteer is fairly central, and situated near the ship that protrudes from the seawall.